A far-right demonstrator in Charlottesville. For the new wave of national socialists, socialism means kicking out immigrants, sequestering black people, and establishing an authoritarian state. Photograph: Steve Helber/AP
The groups that marched through Charlottesville last weekend with clubs, shields and cans of mace were clearly drawn from the most extreme and violent end of Americas far right. But key elements of the ideology of at least some of them echo themes that have animated populist groups across the political spectrum, including on the left.
In their chants and placards, the marchers were explicitly fascist, racist and antisemitic. One of their number is accused of murdering a leftwing activist with his car and injuring many more. They came prepared to do violence to leftists, whom they consider to be existential enemies. They werent shy about any of this, and the event was the crest of an extremist wave that has been swelling since well before Donald Trumps inauguration.
But at the same time, some of the groups that marched evince a hostility to neoliberal capitalism, which is equal to that of the most ardent supporters of Bernie Sanders, the leftwing populist who mounted a vigorous challenge to Hillary Clinton during last years Democratic primaries although for the far right it comes inextricably linked to a virulent racism. Many also support the enhancement of the welfare state.
For example, those marching under the red and blue banners of the National Socialist Movement (NSM) have signed up to a manifesto that supports a living wage, sweeping improvements in healthcare, an end to sales taxes on things of lifes necessity and land reform for affordable housing.
An establishing principle in the document written by their leader, Jeff Schoep, is that the state shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens. It calls for the nationalisation of all businesses which have been formed into corporations.
The manifesto of Matthew Heimbachs Traditionalist Worker Party calls for opportunities for workers to have jobs with justice. And in a manifesto issued on the day of the Charlottesville march, the noted far-right figurehead Richard Spencer wrote that the interests of businessmen and global merchants should never take precedence over the wellbeing of workers, families, and the natural world.
Spencer has previously spoken out including at the American Renaissance conference, a gathering of far-right activists in Nashville in July in favour of single payer universal healthcare.
At the conference, Spencer gave Trump just three out of 10 when invited to rate him because he was too focused on the Republican agenda of tax cuts and dismantling Obamacare.
These critiques of capitalism and mainstream conservatism are key to the socialist element of national socialism. Observers of the far right argue that understanding this is essential to demystifying the far rights appeal, especially to the alienated millennial men currently swelling its ranks.
Matthew Lyons is a researcher into far-right movements, and the author of one book on rightwing populism in the US, and another, recently published, on the alt-right. He argues that a lot of the socialist content in the ideology of movements such as the NSM is vague, and is at one level a prime example of how the far right takes elements of leftist politics and appropriates them for their own purposes.
But he adds that there is a broad hostility to an idea of the capitalist ruling class, within a notion of capitalism centred on stereotypes of Jews.
He talks of a long tradition in Nazism and other parts of the far right of drawing a distinction between finance capital and industrial capital, with the former, identified with Jews, being seen as parasitic.
This identification is apparent on the web pages of NSM, and until the site was purged from the internet on the website of Vanguard America, the group with which the alleged murderer James Fields marched in Charlottesville.
Jewish finance is consistently nominated as the principal enemy of these groups. Lyons explains that this distinction is an antisemitic variant on the ideology of producerism, which is common across the populist right and privileges the makers of tangible things over those engaged in more abstract pursuits. They define industrial capitalists as good capitalists, or even as workers, he says, adding that this was how the noted antisemite Henry Ford described his role at the head of a giant auto manufacturer.
So there is a notion of class conflict, and even a revolutionary perspective, says Lyons. But the society they plan to build on the wreckage of the one they overturn will be constructed for the benefit of whites.
Their socialism, explains Lyons is not universalist. It rejects any notion of an international working class. In their utopia, the state would only be used to tend to the needs of white people. And many groups also reject the idea of equality even among whites.
Alexander Reid Ross is the author of Against the Fascist Creep, a sweeping history of fascism from the early 20th century to the present. He argues that while contemporary fascists try to make nationalism palatable for the working class, ultimately what they envision has nothing to do with socialism; its absolutely inegalitarian.
He also points to the historical example of fascist states during the inter-war period, where workers lived on less food, received lower wages for working longer hours, and enjoyed no collective bargaining rights, and then were fed into the meat grinder of the second world war.
Similarly, for the new wave of national socialists, Ross says, socialism means kicking out immigrants, sequestering black people, and establishing an authoritarian state within which they can live out their fantasies.
Implicitly and explicitly, they offer a critique of the free market capitalism that has been recent conservative orthodoxy throughout the developed west.
Shane Burley, researcher and author of a forthcoming book, Fascism Today: What it Is and How to End It, says: What they want is a situation where the economy is not left up to the free market where it is instead under the control of an elite.
He points out that the trend of mobilising socialist ideas and rhetoric really dates back to the Strasserite section of the Nazis, and helped pull support from areas that would normally go to the far left. It would be a socialism that retains hierarchy, where classes are determined by God or science.
A preoccupation with the source of inequality was on display at Julys American Renaissance conference, where speakers flourished IQ data, and even images of different-sized brains, in their accounts of the reason for social divides. There, and at other alt-right events this year, it has been evident that these views are very attractive to a particular slice of young, millennial men.
In Charlottesville, hundreds marched sporting white polo shirts and distinctive, undercut fashy haircuts. At the Nashville conference, they made up half the crowd. In the breaks between speakers, many sought out Spencer to take candid selfies.
Ross said that in the unresolved aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, those seeking out fascist groups resemble those of the interwar period: veterans who are pissed off about the way that society treats them; and an educated strata who dont feel they can find a place in the current economy.
Observers argue that Trumps campaign rhetoric runs parallel to the racialised economic populism of the far right, and opened up a space in which they can proselytise.
Lyons says that as president, Trump has mostly pursued a familiar conservative agenda, but as a candidate, his platform of protectionism and xenophobic economic nationalism marked out the place where civic and racial nationalism coincide.
In the wake of the Charlottesville protests, and as Trumps presidency continues to melt down, it remains to be seen whether socialism, fascist-style, will retain its allure for so many resentful, violent young men.
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Socialism, fascist-style: hostility to capitalism plus extreme racism - The Guardian